sweet thames, run softly
by verity candor
Summary: "what have we given? / my friend, blood shaking my heart / the awful daring of a moment's surrender" - the waste land, t.s. eliot [FinnickAnnie, pre-Catching Fire, oneshot]


sweet thames, run softly

i_. something he carries on his back_

Finnick is fourteen, and the trident, falling at his feet, marks daybreak.

The real gift is the vines, though - he practices his smile for the cameras while he weaves them together, the voice of his uncle seeming to whisper in his ears.

_(You'll come back home, boy. You come back.)_

The trident he inaugurates with Marina Watercress, who lived three streets down from him. He kissed her lips in school once; today they are covered by vines.

He stabs her through the throat and she bleeds.

ii_. by the barbarous king so rudely forced_

There is something hard in Finnick's eyes, Finnick, who has no home anymore - or rather, no home to return to -

(He will forget many things afterwards, but never the rasp in that smooth voice, the rose in his lapel, the flatness of _Home? _The shaded amusement.)

_(They'll never let you leave them. _says that voice. _They _love_ you. The Capitol is your home now._)

His uncle doesn't send him letters - _gone_, they tell him at last, _lost at sea_.

He perfects his smile for the cameras.

iii_. unreal city, under the brown fog_

The nights are muted, grey smoke lustful with the scent of its own dust.

He leaves, brings back, people who stink despite their layers of make-up, their picture-perfect pouts, the silver stars cut into their skin - they stink of their own vomit, of some drug that spatters their pupils into sparkles, of dirt from their streets, dirt they can't cover over.

Even in the Capitol, there is sweat.

Finnick hurts them the only way he can, the only way he's allowed. He thrusts wrathfully, with an anger that never shows on his face.

(The first time – he goes back to his quarters after. He sees Mags there, and perhaps she hadn't known where he had been, but she can see it on his face. He is Finnick so he lifts up his chin and tries to smile. But perhaps she can see the tears collecting under his eyes, because she pushes her nails into his skin and says, "No. Not even when you're alone. Not even then, sweetling.")

Even that means nothing, because when they shove their gifts into his hands and steal their last kisses from his mouth, their bland, glassy eyes shine.

iv. _those are pearls that were his eyes_

Finnick is the youngest of the mentors, still young enough to paste on his competition smile and show off for the others at the reaping. Mags raises her eyebrow, and Finnick just shoots her a grin over his shoulder. A real one, a kind one.

This first year, in between long daydreams of returning home, he's deadly earnest, talking strategies over with Mags, planning and waiting and preparing to use that clever boy-grown-up smile to search out the sponsors and to _save his tribute_.

But the tribute from District 4 (Pontus, Pontus Flotsam) doesn't know what to do with all of Finnick's preparation, only stares at his mentor's frenzy with uncomprehending eyes. He's sixteen to Finnick's fifteen, but he's afraid. His eyes are so flat (god, _glassy_), so hopeless and helpless, and when he tries to hang himself two nights before the Games start, Finnick stops trying.

No one knows what the Capitol does to winners better than he, and it was silly of him to hope for something better _(something he could _make_ better)_.

The boy lasts seven minutes in the arena, Mags' girl lasts four days, and after that, Finnick lets them die.

v. _he, the young man carbuncular, arrives_

Finnick is nineteen, and the tributes this year clutch hands and glance firmly at one another, as though they don't realize that only one of them can _(might) _win the Games.

Their eyes are shy, sometimes, and Finnick can't explain the mingled rush of disgust and whatever else that runs through him at the sight. (_Too many darkened bedrooms, and never anything but a sly smile in return, the burning feeling of his skin revolting, and, perhaps, perhaps, he is -_)

Ferlin is strong and proud and has a true arm. Finnick pretends not to notice, flirts his way through the mentors, the stylists, the sponsors. He's come up with a new trick – anything to lay a price on all those uncaring mouths – _unique services, _he whispers, and steals secrets from lonely people, carries the weight off of unhappy shoulders, and all for a kiss –

vi. _at the violet hour, the evening hour that strives homeward_

Finnick wasn't one of the rich ones, either – never trained, never taught. Only the trained arm of the boy who's been to sea, the rolling walk of someone who grew up half in the water, half in the shade of a lopsided shanty on the shore.

He doesn't live there anymore.

He has no home to return to, no place left on the wharf where his uncle lived, nothing but a house covered in enough half-naked mermaids and artfully carved fish fountains to make any real wharf man ill.

He's never seen it.

His uncle is dead.

He reminds himself of this by hissing a lewd invitation in the girl's ears, and at the sight of her disgusted, slightly horrified glare, convinces himself that he has given up.

vii. _a woman drew her long black hair out tight_

Or, at least, until Ferlin corners him in a hallway and hisses _We can't do this by ourselves, we need you to help us, this is why you're here._

And Finnick thinks _No, no, I'm not, not really, _and almost turns away.

The other boy's eyes are pleading when he says,_ please, for Annie, at least. Please._

viii. _and fiddled whisper music on those strings_

It should mean nothing; and factually, practically, it does.

Except Finnick loved someone that much, once.

ix. _lilacs out of the dead land_

They want him to teach them how to survive – both of them, and Finnick can't quite believe it, that they can have watched the Games all their lives, and still believe that 'together' can mean something here, on the cusp of the Arena.

But they have learned all they can from Mags – about roots, and berries, and water, and stay safe and attack first, and, of course, fishing hooks – so now they stand with Finnick.

Much as Finnick expected, Ferlin is stronger, and better suited to fighting, but, to his surprise, it is shy Annie, with her cloud of sea-dark hair, and her limpid seaweed eyes who is better at the setting of traps, the weaving of mesh-fine nets, at the luring and entrapping of others – she understands the necessity of lies, while honest Ferlin looks about, bewildered.

They both look at the weapons with varying degrees of disgust and the targets with displeasure, though, and when he shows them each of his hundred different ways to kill someone from behind, from the front, with a smile, they turn the same look on him. In between increasingly dry suggestions, Finnick wonders why he is trying again at all.

x. _the sea was calm, your heart would have responded gaily_

Finally, the girl – Annie – sets down her spear and asks Finnick to show them the throw that won him the Games.

He's nearly forgotten what it looked like - no, that's not true – he's forgotten _who _it looked like, which District, which name, whose face took its ruined shape under the prongs of his trident, but the trident itself – the sharp spiral spinning itself through the air – that he remembers clearly, and that is what he shows them.

Ferlin's eyes nearly roll out of his head, and they shine like the waves in summer as he rattles off an enthusiastic spout of muddled praise and eager queries. Annie finally reaches out a quelling hand and shoots Finnick an apologetic look.

Finnick answers Ferlin's questions anyway, detailing the specifics of grip and force and angle slowly enough to let Ferlin understand, and, somehow, that is all it takes to make them heed him, see him, to try again with the targets – That is all it takes to make them trust him, and the knowledge laps against the shores of his heart like the tide, slowly lapping its way to shore.

xi. _these fragments I have shored against my ruins_

He is flooded with questions after that, questions on what to do in this situation, how to handle someone from that direction from Ferlin, questions on how to avoid being found, which traps are most inconspicuous where from Annie – and at some point the questions turn into tiny anecdotes about Ferlin's first boat trip, and quieter revelations from Annie about sewing with her grandmother and picking tiny bones out of her fish, how they were born days after one another, how Annie would sulk some days, and Ferlin would sing her out of it – a silly rhyme, and senseless: _Bright Annie, Proud Annie, Pretty Annie, come and play! – _a bond strong as siblings, and stronger than the pull of the ocean when someone offered Ferlin a place on a boat.

At some point, Annie and Ferlin beginning laughing at him for his expression when he is teaching, and he sneaks in his own barbs on Ferlin's posture and Annie's grog-green eyes.

Sometimes, he catches Mags staring at the three of them with a reproachful look, but Finnick finds he has no trouble hiding from her eyes, and the knowledge that _three days, two days,_ _tomorrow and one of them can win only one of them only one_.

On the night of _tomorrow, _the three of them are up late into the night, Finnick frantically drilling them on everything they have learned, everything they now know until at last, they stagger to Annie's room and collapse on the bed into a silence so heavy it is nearly restful. It is the night before the Hunger Games, and they are talking not about everything they know will be dragged into the sight of the world tomorrow, but the shine of the seed pearls that are dug out by the dozens when a catch of mussels is brought in.

Outside these doors, Finnick is the oldest thing in the world, encrusted with the scum and dirt of a thousand nights spent not-alone-but-abandoned, but inside of them, he is just barely a year and a half older than Ferlin, a brother who has spent his first year at sea, rather than the beautiful monster covered in the blood of so many childhoods.

Finnick feels as full as he hasn't since eons and centuries ago when he was thirteen and surrounded by boys who ran with him into the waters, and girls who kissed him gaily in the spray of droplets from the surf, and to Finnick, it is like nothing else in his ancient life – it is like having a home.

xii. _i bring the horoscope myself_

Finnick is filled with an unreasonable rush of hope when they survive the Cornucopia – Ferlin has Annie by the hand, and they hurry away from the blood, and he watches the two of them manage to hide from the tributes from 1 and 2, as they search for shelter, and set out their traps – just liked they'd talked about – just as they'd planned, and he can see the relaxation on their faces as night falls and they are _alive._

Finnick can't hide the helpless part of him that thinks if they can go – if they can go till the end, maybe, somehow, maybe, and then there is a telltale shadow in the leaves, and he thinks _no _and Ferlin turns to smile at Annie behind him and Finnick thinks _no no_

xiii. _who was once handsome and tall as you_

His head teeters in a slow, horrible arc before it splatters to the ground.

And then Annie screams.

xiv. _the dry stone no sound of water_

It is through a fog of horror – _so fast – so _fast_ – _ that Finnick prays and pleads, alternately begs and threatens the monitor, desperate for a sign of Annie – _Clever Annie, Strong Annie –_ please_,_ among the trees - _no cannon, no cannon, please, no -_

When she finally appears on the screen, this is what he sees:

The scream has stopped streaming from her mouth, but it will never crawl out from behind her eyes – _grog-green, he'd called them, and he remembered the gentle exasperation that had appeared within them when she smiled – and Ferlin had laughed, he'd been – _her wonderful, shallow-sea eyes, flat and opaque on the monitor, blank as earth.

When he sees the water trickle into the arena, he thinks at first it is only Annie's tears.

xv. _sebulla pe theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo_

Finnick is there, of course, he's there, and Mags stands behind him as he waits for them to bring Annie up.

"- the water, the water, waterwater -"

Her hair hangs down in fat strips when they pull her out of the arena, water drips from her skin while she shivers wildly, from her feet as she mumbles, eyes darting wildly from side to side.

It is Mags who notices his white knuckled grip on his own wrist, the terrible, curdled pallor of his face. She taps his hand to remind him of where he is, and he breathes.

_Annie_, he is thinking, _oh __Annie, no -_

The guard at her side can't hide a flicker of disgust as he guides her forward, and she writhes in his one handed grip. There is a flicker in her eyes as she catches sight of the red carpet, and she screams – a high-pitched, wailing shriek.

"Kill me!_ Kill me! _Kill me! Kill me, please,_ killme_kill_mekillme -_"

And Finnick feels that shriek cut into him, so harsh it is nearly physical, and he suddenly desperately wants to be sick on the floor, to call Ferlin and make him _fix_ her, to run three days back in time to when the three of them collapsed on the bed in Annie's room and told each other stories of home.

(But most of all Finnick wants to stop the sound of his own heart beating – wants to twist it or wrench it into silence to keep it from screaming its secret song with Annie.

_killme_

_kill_)

xvi. _and still she cried and still the world pursues_

They place her in the best Home in Four. There are only three others there – Taara, a pale, red-eyed girl who never speaks, Garron, a boy who flies into furious, violent rages whenever he's touched, and Feth, a boy who can move no part of his body but his eyes.

Among them, Annie is like an unexpected hurt, some floating bit of kelp beneath the waves, and Finnick can't shake the horrible, shivering ache of it, the way she trembles and trembles and he remembers the girl who stood so firm despite her slimness, the calm in her eyes, and how steady she had seemed, a beacon in the night upon the waves.

(_and_ _then_ _the slow arc and the scarlet slide of it against his throat_ -)

He remembers the story she told about her grandmother, how she and Annie used to sit together and pick the bones out of their fish, and he remembers how he had put his foot on the chest of the last Tribute in his Games, he remembers that crushed skull and how he'd fixed his smile for the cameras and he thinks _smart Annie, strong Annie, gentle Annie._

And he thinks _This is why? This is what they keep us for?_

He doesn't go back. He asks Mags to arrange for Annie's entire winnings to go to her grandmother, and funnels half his money into keeping her at the Home, but he leaves her there, because he thinks the idea of seeing her again would make him combust, or scream, or burn.

xvii. _in this decayed hole_

Burn – that is what he does anyway in the days after. Burn, drown. Words.

It's surprisingly easy to throw himself into the grimy riptide of the Capitol's dark belly, to sink himself in the waters he's tried to skim over till now. It's simple as swimming to allow the hatred he feels for himself to vanish in the dirty arms of someone else – someone who opens themselves up under the flashing city lights.

(he had been so close – he had been _so_ _close_ – and neither of them had been _saved_ – nothing had been saved)

He lives in a vague smear of other people's worried eyes for three months before Mags catches hold of him. She shoves the crumpled letter into his palm. In his bright haze, Finnick is halfway towards throwing it away, when Mags clutches at him with her knotted hands.

"Read it," she says firmly – and if there is a complicated flash of feelings, of deep water under the shallows of her voice, Finnick has not yet learned to decipher it.

It takes him three spangle-spotted tries to decipher the words on the page – they are in the shaky script of someone who has only rarely been forced to write, and the paper is a briny grey-green beneath them.

my tiem is coming soon  
you are the only one helped annie til now.  
be as good to her as you know how.

xviii. _if there were rock and also water_

The words crawl under Finnick's skin and hover, beading up against his wrists and his feet and his teeth. He hides away the paper – somewhere, he can't remember – but dancing behind his eyes is the memory of two Tributes, and how one of them had sea-green eyes and one of them died.

He goes.

It's not empty there – Finnick had expected it to be, but there is a shifting bustle of activity that follows him – forms, administrators, the worried whisper of the wardkeeper, mentioning Annie's usual attendant is on break – all the way to her room.

There is a long moment poised outside, where he imagines every terrible thing which could be awaiting him inside; dead-eyed, stringy-haired, feral, angry, angry, angry at him – he's frightened; he can't help it.

Then he opens the door.

In his first glimpse, he can see that many of his fears are untrue. Annie's hair is brushed neatly, her eyes are green and calm, and he can see curiosity, he can see – and then Annie opens her mouth, and floods the world with living sound.

A hand is on his shoulder, a smaller whirl of noise behind him as he is pulled out, but not before that noise opens and shuts his world. The sounds of Annie's screams follow him as the attendant hurries him back through the door.

"_Who_," the young man hisses over the faint sounds of her cries, "Allowed you inside in _red, _don't you know how she-"

"I'm sorry," Finnick says, interrupting, remorseful, "I'm sorry, I didn't – I didn't think she still–" He feels the pang of it, feels it hit him when he understands what it is, still is, that drives Annie over the edge. _Red_, the man had said, _in red_ and he thinks _never from behind her eyes_ and he thinks _oh, Annie, sweet Annie, brave Annie, I know, I know._

The attendant stops, and looks at him. " – _Still_? Did… you know her? Before?"

Finnick isn't looking at him. "I was the one – I pay for it," he says at last, "I pay for her room here."

The attendant is chewing on his lip. "You'll need to change," he says, "I can lend you –"

"Yes," Finnick says, "Thank you."

xix._ there is shadow under this red rock_

He can't make himself go back inside, even covered in the attendant's blinding white. _Coward _– that is what Finnick is – and he learns it in seconds now, standing by a door he can't open.

xx._ who is the third who walks always beside you_

He wears blue the second time he goes, because he wakes up alone one morning, dreaming of Ferlin as he was, that strong throwing arm and odd slouch, that bright smile and a questioning gleam in his eye – searching – _Annie?_

Finnick goes armored in the blue of the sea, wrapped in the arms of his mother, every seafarer's wild beloved, and opens the door.

Annie looks at him a long moment, her glance flicking up at the snick of the door, and time ebbs and flows like the tide.

"Finnick," she says at last, weary, kind, and her voice stretches for years, somehow before and after everything, giving him Finnick with his uncle, Finnick with the trident, with the cameras. Finnick shattered and Finnick put together. He sags against the door, for support, for an anchor.

"Annie," he says, and she is solemn, pale skin and shadows, grey-green eyes and unsmiling, and in the gaps where tears do not fall and the raw chasm of their grief is not explored, that's where Ferlin is smiling, is staring out at waves lapping up to shore, is seventeen and still dreaming by the water.

Between Finnick and Annie there is miles of distance – two islands, two raw wounds, open to salt air and stinging, and no relief.

xxi. _i, tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives_

But there is something in that meeting which is soothing – something about the shock of that shared isolation which clears some terrible knot from Finnick's heart – and lets something else in.

Perhaps, it was the angry fog he had been stumbling through since Annie's Games (Annie's – as though there hadn't been someone else) but suddenly there is something to see when the Tributes come again – Mags, ferrying messages to Wiress from District Three, Johanna's cool, cutting glance, broadcasting the proud lift of her chin and the promise of violence in her stance, and the way Chaff turns up, as though by accident, as though after twenty years as a Mentor he could lose his way, or wander somewhere he's not wanted.

Finnick before would have barged in, because it was Mags. Would have trusted her and demanded a response – but Finnick has burned and drowned, and Finnick is learning again how to doubt himself.

He watches them, waits for pieces of information to fall near him, catches glimpses of more people when he enters Mags' quarters as though he'd just been passing by, watches for something to make sense of.

And then he gets it, the letter that comes to Mags, from Haymitch.

Haymitch Abernathy – who laughs bitterly as he waves a drink, as he says _Nobody ever wins the Hunger Games, _then amends, _Well,_ _maybe that bastard – _is leading a rebellion.

"Why didn't you ask me?" he says to Mags, unfurling the letter for her, "Why wouldn't you tell me?"

"Because," Mags murmurs, blunt, as always, meeting his eyes, "I knew you were looking for a reason to die."

Finnick shuts his eyes for a moment, and lets the truth of her words settle into him before he tightens his grip on the paper, and looks at her again.

"Are you asking me _not_ to die?" he says.

"Sweet child," Mags says, gently shaking her head, "I'm asking you to join us."

xxii. _they called me the hyacinth girl_

Finnick does, and gives them what he can – he and Johanna. But what Johanna does brutally, the cloak of rage that covers her every movement shifting and shifting, Finnick does sweet as a kiss, gentle as a whisper in the ear. It's the same old game, collecting secrets, but now there is a purpose, a receding of the waves before the storm hits. Before the destruction.

After all, there is a promise in the way Finnick stands, too (and between the currents of that promise, there is something else – shifting and shifting).

He goes back again to see Annie

Most of the time, he waits by the door, watching her hum and smile to herself, weaving nets with her fingers. It's hard to explain what it is that's so warm about it, strings being knotted together, slowly meeting and parting, and meeting again.

It's Annie that says it aloud, and Finnick is not surprised that of the two of them, she is the braver one.

"Are you lonely?" she asks, eyes still focused on the motion of her hands.

Finnick shuts his eyes. Breathes. "Yes," he says, wrenches it out like a splinter from his soul.

"Are you sad?" she says.

"Yes," he says, and asks her, "How do you know?" a little desperately.

"I can see it,' she says, looking up at him, "And I know, because you are here, with me."

xxiii. _in the faint moonlight, the grass is singing_

And, while Finnick's breath knots, and meets and separates, she adds, "It's better because they are together. Nets are stronger than strings."

She raises it towards him, then, showing him strength, and when he comes back, Finnick sits at the foot of her bed, bringing things together, making them better.

xxi. _unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes_

You don't forget the scent of the roses. But you try, Finnick realizes. You try.

"You haven't been keeping your appointments," says the voice.

"Perhaps," the voice says, "You have more pressing concerns?" And then deadly, and then crisp: "Concerns… I should make myself aware of?"

And the fear. The fear, and the fear.

xxii. _is the cruelest month_

Finnick plays nicely for a long time – doesn't dare carry word anywhere, even to Mags. Doesn't dare let that horrible voice any closer to her, to them and their efforts. He plays nicely for as long as he can, and then loneliness rushes up to him like sea-longing. It's almost impossible to credit, how here, even surrounded by an endless crush of people, there is a wider chasm than any distance he feels to Annie. The memory of strings, of knots, of nets, ensnare him – draw him into deep waters.

It's Johanna that sees it – even with her safe harbor gone, she knows the look of it, the _want_ of it – and it's Johanna that says, "Send one of them to me." Her eyes are unreadable as always, but her mouth is soft, her mouth understands. "Even they'll notice you looking this pathetic," she adds, shooting a dismissive glance at the building around them.

He does it, goes back to Annie like she is the drug he has been waiting to drown in all these years.

xxiii. _with spring rain_

And seeing her again is just that – both mourning and joy, both wound and healing. She looks at him and says, "Finnick," and it comes to him that no one has ever seen as much of him as she has – no one has ever held as much of him as she has.

He looks at her, and sees Annie as she is, learning to be, learning to weave things together and bring them close again, however far they were before. He looks at her again and sees Annie-as-she-was, slim as a harpoon spear and sharp as salt spray, and thinks _That long?_

And the answer is _yes_, and the answer is _no_; the answer is if they hadn't scraped out the gentlest parts of themselves like flesh within a shell, would it have meant anything that they have survived, that they have lived long enough for these quiet moments in the dying sun or found their way, inexorably, back to each other?

Could it have meant anything that they keep finding their way back, that he comes to her, and she comes to him, and across the aching distance of their hurt, they reach each other, crying _Land, land ho_, _land, at last_?

xxxiv. _et, o ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!_

Still, sometimes, Annie screams in the nights, cries and screeches and shuts her eyes and covers her ears to hide a name from herself.

Most nights, Finnick is far away – working and hiding and striving, far from water, nearer the fire that they all carry, the banked flame – but even being close is no guarantee of peace. Some demons have no rest.

Madness is a familiar demon, one he shares with every touch he showers on her, touches he bestows in every way he knows how - hands on her wrist to keep her from scratching herself, forehead pressed against hers to soothe her with his skin, a mouth for her to scream into, and finally,

"Annie, Annie, Annie-" a whisper in her ears, "Annie - Annie - Clever Annie, Kind Annie, Sweet Annie, Good Annie -"

"Young Annie, Gentle Annie, Lovely Annie -" her fingers still briefly as she seizes onto the familiar rhyme, muttering it absently.

"- Golden Annie, Pretty Annie, Bright Annie -" he continues with her, rhythm beating against their teeth, fingers pat-pat-pattering against skin, and finally, finally, Annie subsides into silence, questing hands fluttering against his throat, eyelids closing over distant eyes.

He kisses them, mouth gentle, both hands clasped against her face, and despite the quelling darkness and the grime and the dust of this room, relief shimmers through his tired eyes.

"Finnick,' she says, softly, eyes shut, "Finnick loves me."

(And whatever else he leaves on her skin - whatever gift he drips into the secret hollows of her throat – that water is only the salt of the sea.)


End file.
